Hormone Pregnancy Tests

Debate between Yasmin Qureshi and Peter Heaton-Jones

Thursday 14th December 2017 Commons Chamber

[Peter Heaton-Jones (North Devon) (Con)]

I congratulate my right hon. Friend the Member for Hemel Hempstead (Sir Mike Penning) on securing this debate under the auspices of the Backbench Business Committee. This was one of the very first issues brought to me by a constituent following my election as the Member for North Devon two and a half years ago, and I want to raise her case again.

The people affected—the families, children, mothers and babies—should be at the very centre of our thinking. I will give one example. I was contacted by my constituent Diane Surmon from Barnstaple. She gave birth to her daughter Helen Jean Marie Barham on 29 November 1974. Diane wrote to me to say that she was given Primodos on 10 April that year, while she was pregnant—she remembers the date all too clearly. She was given the hormone pregnancy test. She was living in Cwmbran at the time and Helen was eventually born in the Royal Gwent Hospital in Newport. However, the baby was born with a number of conditions: Helen had hydrocephalus—a very rare disease—and suffered a brain haemorrhage at 12 weeks of age. Her seizures then started; she was treated at the Heath Hospital in Cardiff and then at a later date at Great Ormond Street Hospital. Diane has a letter from a consultant neurologist at the time, which states that in his opinion the drug Primodos had caused the difficulties to her baby.

Diane told me that Helen does have a quality of life. She can walk, albeit short distances. She needs a wheelchair for longer distances, or when she goes shopping or goes out with friends for a meal, for instance. She is able to feed herself, but help with her daily needs is required and she will always need 24-hour care because of her seizures.

That is one example of the extraordinary impact this has had on one family and one individual and one mother, but that can be multiplied so many times, and that is why it is absolutely right that my right hon. Friend the Member for Hemel Hempstead and others on both sides of the House—this is not a party political issue—seek to ensure this issue is kept in the spotlight. It is right that it is.

Therefore, there are many others in situations like that of Mrs Surmon. Over the years, there have been many attempts by Governments of all colours to get to the bottom of this. I know the Minister is sincere in trying to do that and to find a way forward that will help us get to the bottom of what has happened. There has also been a whole range of studies over the years. The difficulty is—this is the nub of the point I want to get across—that there is so much contradiction between all those studies; there is no agreement yet. The hon. Member for Bolton South East (Yasmin Qureshi) delivered a good speech and rightly made the point that in the 1970s there was a report that showed, apparently clearly, evidence of a causal link. However, in 2016, the report from the Commission on Human Medicines said that there was no such evidence. Now we have had this report from the expert working group, which has come up with a similar finding. As we have so many contradictions and differences of opinion, how do we get to the bottom of this?

[Yasmin Qureshi]

The report by the Commission on Human Medicines was a result of a letter I wrote to the Medicines and Healthcare Products Regulatory Agency. The report was not a study into the drug itself; the commission just looked at documents that were in existence, conducted a review on the basis of those documents and gave an opinion. It was not a study.

[Peter Heaton-Jones]

I thank the hon. Lady for that clarification. Many of these studies have been into the historical evidence and the paperwork, which have been sifted through over and again—she is right to make that point—but there are still differences of opinion between what was said in the 1970s, in 2016 and in 2017, and that is the difficulty.

I have asked the House of Commons Library for quite a lot of background information, which I was going to try to get into, but in the six minutes allowed to me I cannot do too much. What I will say, however, is that, having read the latest report by the expert working group, it is clear that there is a concern, highlighted by my right hon. Friend the Member for Hemel Hempstead and others, about the contradiction between what it was asked to do and what it then actually found out. The question is whether there is a causal link or an association. We need to explore that: were the terms of reference of this expert working group followed in the way it carried out its investigation? On that, I absolutely agree: we need to look further into what exactly has been done here.

Further evidence from the expert working group is due to be published in the new year. That will be important.